To my way of thinking, it’s fairly easy to “game” an automated metric, such as TIOBE. I question the actual decision-making value of such data ... and, I think that the people who are actually tasked with making these often multi-million dollar decisions already know that. If journalists don’t, then so what. My opinions, or theirs, about what sort of aortic valve is most-popular in heart surgery doesn’t matter either. (Especially with regards to my heart.)

Programming languages are not created equal, are not interchangeable, and in the preponderance of cases you are not dealing with a blank slate situation. Most time is spent dealing with existing systems, and teams involving dozens if not hundreds of people many of whom must be re-trained. The risk-meter is pegging the top of the scale.

I quite frankly believe that these “popularity contests” don’t make a hill of beans’s difference to a decision-maker because they have nothing really to do with the decision that is being made. The actual decision has very little to do with the language itself, and everything to do with the holistic totality (ommmm...) of what it does and where it lives. And it has e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g to do with risk.

The freight is moving.

Perl is moving it. It’s doing it. I have confidence that it will continue to do so.

My business is to move freight. I’ve got millions of dollars’ worth of freight to move every day.

The risk to me is not that another tool could or could not do it “better.” The risk to me is the risk of failure, and the apparently-unnecessary costs of avoiding it. After all, I’m not failing now.

I’m not saying that your bright idea isn’t bright, but it’s not complete and/or relevant. You’re arguing against a problem that I don’t have, and promising to create a problem that I also don’t have.

Sure, not meant to be a slam-shut comment ... to be taken in-balance. These bullet points can be successfully argued; they are simply sales-objections. But what is not a contributing factor here? “Popularity.”